Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Game art from 2003

It is not true that I have never done art for role playing games. I illustrated an entire game booklet for a game producer in 2003. This was a game set in a fantasy Renaissance. The game developer gave me all the descriptions I needed for characters, environments, and scenarios. I did a series of character portraits and a lot of black and white drawings, too. This game was only published online and sank into oblivion within a year. This character is an idealistic, naive Prince who naturally gets involved in bad politics.

I drew the original drawing in ink, then scanned it in and colored it with what I had at the time, which was Corel Painter 7. This program was buggy and every so often instead of saving your work, it destroyed it so you had to have a lot of backup copies. I did the coloring for the drawings the wrong way. I used the space-finding tool, the "Magic Wand," to find an area and did it all in one layer. You're supposed to overlay the colors in many layers, leaving the drawing untouched. But I didn't have any problems with the art, so I continued doing it that way.

This type of computer-colored ink drawing is standard for comic books nowadays but I don't find it in game art, which is rendered in a more "painting" - like style. I'm amazed I was able to do so well in 2003, right now I don't feel as though I could draw a damn thing except someone's shabby roadside building. I need and want to draw human figures and portraits but I have lost my confidence that I can draw them.